Itineraries of best places to visit before taking the ultimate trip to the Great Beyond are endless, AKA bucket lists. Things to do and places to go are a very personal thing depending on what you hope to fulfill from your experience of visiting those particular places. These can range from memories, pleasure, historical and architectural wonderment, you have the whole world to choose from with "so much to do, so little time.”

Here is the list of Ten Awesome Places to Visit Before You Die

1. Pompeii

Settlers originally flocked to the site of the Roman port city because of its fertile soil, the product of volcanic ash from nearby Mount Vesuvius. Yet that very same volcano would erupt and doom the city of 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants in A.D. 79. Many Europeans toured the city's ancient ruins in the decades following their initial excavations in 1748. Indeed, Pompeii became all the rage across the continent, inspiring a gaudy revival in Classical art and architecture. For present-day visitors, the real thrill of Pompeii is that the most mundane aspects of ancient Roman life have been preserved for centuries beneath fine-grained volcanic ash. Graffiti still covers walls and some of the excavated bakeries had bread loaves in their ovens.

2. Taj Mahal

More than three million travelers visit India's Taj Mahal every year. The white marble monument completed over some 15 years by the emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth in 1631. It rises on a three-acre site on the Yamuna River in the northern city of Agra. By the mid-1990s, the Taj's splendors such as the 187-foot, minaret-flanked dome, fronted by a reflecting pool and surrounded by a walled garden had deteriorated markedly, prompting a multimillion-dollar restoration effort spearheaded by the Indian government. The massive undertaking includes scrubbing the marble exterior and a restoration of the massive red sandstone main gates, including the replacement of semiprecious inlay.

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